Born 2 Rule

We have arrived at the third and final post on Hampton Court - the Georgian part. Everywhere you go, the Georgians are there, with Christopher Wren and neo-Classical Architecture. In fact, Christopher Wren actually designed the Georgian Wing of the palace, which pretty much shows that you can't throw a brick in London without hitting a Christopher Wren building. The best thing about the Georgian wing is that it looks out over the gardens and grounds that surround the palace. The gardens are beautiful, but in that really formal, structured kind of way that I don't really understand - what's the point of nature if its not natural?

Look at those perfectly conical trees.

 

Interestingly enough, when the South Wing was added, some of the Tudor parts were left and incorporated into the new addition.  The best bit is this amazing room known as the Wolsey Closet, it has these beautiful patterned ceilings, which have Wolsey's iconography like the ornate 'W', and scenes from the Passion of  Christ are painted around the walls. A lot of people have laboured under the misapprehension that this room was Wolsey's private chapel, because of the religious nature of the scenes on the wall, but it is more likely that it was just a fancy meeting room, designed to impress the foreign visitors that Wolsey entertained.

The room in the photo above is another interesting one - its the bedroom of the king and queen, and, through a system of ropes and pulleys, the door can be locked by someone sitting in the bed. How cool is that - don't want to get your feet cold walking across the room to unlock the door, no problem! Interesting side-note: royal bedrooms are easily identifiable because they all lock from the inside. This is for obvious reasons - the king and queen needed a place to sleep that was both private and safe.

The dome of the chapel in the Georgian wing.

But lets not beat about the bush anymore, we all know what this post is really about - the Georgian kings and how awful they were. From George I and his embarrassingly bad grasp on the English language, to George IV and the terrible relationship he had with his wife Caroline, the first four Georges were not the most pleasant of people. In particular, there were continuous tensions between father and son, with the next generation never learning from the mistakes of the previous. And of course, poor old George the third, who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, as well as being the king who lost the American colonies. This situation has been no better summarised that in this video, which is probably the best thing I have ever seen! If you don't love it, I'm not sure we can be friends any more...

I think that is a high point on which to end, sorry about the shortness of this post - the Georgian part was last on my list to see and I had to almost run through to see it all before they locked the gates for the night!